Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.

Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)

Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.

Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We both started blogging in 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

Here’s a look at the numbers…..

What went down in January

House of Rose and Good Financial Cents join forces…

The biggest co-promo that we were able to pull off was the 52 Week Money Challenge. I randomly came across this on Pinterest while doing some research.

Yes, I was doing research on Pinterest. Don’t judge. 😉

I noticed that the 52 Week Challenge chart had been pinned thousands of times and the picture was “ok” at best. I knew that Mandy could come up with something better and that’s how the idea was born.

The idea: create a much better looking chart that will hopefully go semi-viral on Pinterest. Offer to match one lucky person who completes the challenge $1,378. Offer them a free PDF download of a new much sexier looking savings chart.

Was there a catch? Kinda.

The catch was to qualify for the money prize they had to sign up for a free Capital One 360 account (aff link) which we are an affiliate for that pays $20 for each new savings account opened.

The get the free PDF download, they had to sign up for my email list which also gave them access to my free Money Dominating Toolkit.

I used LeadPages to collect the email addresses and also deliver the PDF. You can see the slick looking landing page here. (screenshot below)

Note: I have told you how much I love LeadPages? I’m working on a comprehensive review post on LeadPages and why you need to start using it now.

#iloveleadpages

52 Week Challenge Results

The results were fantastic. Income wise we generated over $4,500 of affiliate revenue. (realize that $1,400 of this will go towards the winner)

The part I was most excited about was adding 2,000 email subscribers to my list because of the challenge. This is the most that my email list has grown in about a month time frame.

Happy Mommy Box Update

They also had a huge response on Instagram when the box went out. TONS of mommies were sharing photos of their boxes and all the great items.

Like I said last month, we are not currently including any Happy Mommy Box income in our reports just yet. We may change our minds later, but since Mandy and Natalie are doing this together we decided we didn’t want to disclose it all.

Please be praying for Mandy’s partner Natalie. She’s been in the hospital for the last several days and is having surgery this week.

This is a rough breakdown of our expenses that I’ll try to document each month as well as our gross income. For a closer look at many of the tools we use to run our online business check out our monster post 24 Blogging Tools To Grow Your Blog.

What’s Going On Now…

Wow. I don’t even know where to begin. There’s a lot going on in both of our businesses.

First off, we’ve been asked to be keynote speakers at Digital Colabs in San Diego.

This is my second keynote speech that I’ll be giving this year (first one is in a few weeks) and this is Mandy’s first. Even though it’s several months aways she’s already stressing. Haha….

What makes this even sweeter is that we’ll be sharing the stage with friends of our Pat Flynn (SmartPassiveIncome.com), Chris Ducker (ChrisDucker.com), and Paula Pant (AffordAnything.com).

Pivot

I was first introduced to the term “pivot” when I was reading Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup. He defines making a pivot as to

“make a structural course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and engine of growth.”

I’ve had plenty of pivots in my life in my professional career and in my online business. In fact, I feel like I make a pivot once a week.

After attending my coaching program at the end of January and then making a key strategic connection in the past few weeks, I’m making a strategic connection with my business. This will affect both my financial planning practice and my blog.

I’m excited about this pivot because I feel it has the potential to take my business to the next level. It’s still in the beginning stages so I can’t reveal too much. You’ll definitely be learning more in the next few months.

I am so glad I found your website(s). I have been following your advice for the past few months and my blog is growing well. I started blogging without having any idea about what I was getting into but slowly, thank to people like you, I am feeling comfortable being a part of this community. Happy Mommy Box sounds like a wonderful thing. Maybe I will become a subscriber when I have a child! Congratulations on your success, you guys work so hard and it is so good to see it all working out well

Oh how this intrigues me! I definitely didn’t start blogging because I’m money hungry or anything; I’ve been a writer at heart since I was in elementary school. But seeing this makes me just see how real it can be for me to one day be able to work from home while taking care of my kids, and still be able to contribute to the home financially so it’s not all on my husband. We both work outside of the home now, and don’t get me wrong…I love my job, but I really want to see how I could make my writing a business for us. I will certainly keep reading your posts and seeing what changes I could make. Praying God opens my eyes and my brain to comprehend it all and actually apply it, lol.